Patrick Chalmers

Patrick Chalmers devoted his postal-history writing to securing recognition for his father, James Chalmers, in accounts of the adhesive postage stamp. The Adhesive Postage Stamp develops that claim through official correspondence, petitions, and arguments about the reforms associated with Rowland Hill and penny postage. Project Gutenberg gives Patrick Chalmers's dates as 1819-1891, cataloguing the book under postage stamps, James Chalmers, and Sir Rowland Hill. A separate 1891 bibliographic record from Harvard’s digitized copy gives the longer subtitle concerning documents removed from the Treasury and letters from political supporters. The work should therefore be read as a participant’s case in a historical priority dispute, not as a neutral modern survey. Its value lies in the documents and reasoning Chalmers chose to assemble while defending his family’s position. Readers interested in philately and communications history can use the book alongside later scholarship to compare competing explanations of how Britain adopted adhesive stamps.